NOVANEWS

For the first time a ‘Cub of the Caliphate’ executing a prisoner by decapitation as the terror group increasingly use boys to kill, Daily Mail reports.

Terrorists fighting for Saudi Zio-Wahhabi ISIS have forced a young child to savagely behead a Syrian army officer in the first execution of its kind.

The sickening murder is understood to have taken at the Western Hir Palace in the province of Homs after the soldier was captured by Saudi Zio-Wahhabi ISIS terrorists at the nearby Al-Bosayri army checkpoint.

The unnamed officer have been beheaded in the ancient city of Palmyra, which Saudi Zio-Wahhabi ISIS captured in May and have since set about systematically destroying as they believe the city’s several millennia-old buildings and monuments distract from the worship of God.

Saudi Zio-Wahhabi ISIS have increasingly used young boys in their gruesome executions, with some children no older than 12 being forced to shoot the terror group’s opponents at point blank range. However using a child to carry out a brutal beheading with a knife is a sickening new low for Saudi Zio-WahhabI ISIS.

Harrowing footage: Today’s savage murder is not the first time Saudi Zio-Wahhabi ISIS have used boys to commit a sickening murder. It isn’t even the first time the terror group has employed child executioners in Palmyra (pictured)

Posted in SyriaComments Off on A Cube of Caliphate Beheads a Soldier for the First Time

NOVANEWS

The Department of Justice’s National Institute for Justice funds law enforcement research to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each year. The full list of grants, posted each year, is a valuable insight into future of law enforcement trends in the United States. NIJ funding for 2014 appears to have primarily focused on two issue areas: school safety and clearing DNA backlogs at police departments across the country.

Among the dozens of projects that focus on school safety, there are some that appear progressive, at least judging from the limited amount of information available online. But while a slice of the funding explicitly aims to examine and interrupt the school to prison pipeline using restorative justice methodologies, a lot of the money is going toward research that will probably further entrench disparate outcomes based on race in the criminalizing trend in school discipline.

One of those projects is a City of Chicago Board of Education program called “Connect and Redirect to Respect (CRR),” which aims “to use social media monitoring to identify and connect youth to behavioral interventions.” In other words, the DOJ is giving $2.1 million dollars to the Chicago public schools to conduct research on how spying on student social media can impact school discipline. In New York, police spying on youth social media has resulted in the criminalization of speech.

Elsewhere, DOJ awarded nearly $2.5 million to the University of Virginia to study how “student threat assessment” is a “safe and supportive prevention strategy.” DOJ gave the Miami-Dade public schools $4.2 million for research on a project called “Enhancing School Safety Through Digital Intelligence: Evaluating Campus Shield.”

Among the projects DOJ funded that are not related to DNA testing or schools are the following:

Nearly $4 million to the private Rand Corporation to identify law enforcement technology needs;

$200,000 to Rand for something called the “Electronic Surveillance Continuation Project”;

About $500,000 to Carnegie Melon University for research into something called an “Adaptive Expert System that Learns to Detect and Track Patterns of Crime in Internet Advertisements”;

Follow-up funding, to reach a total of nearly $5 million, to FBI-connected private firm ManTech for “contactless finger print assessment”;

$261,000 to Arkansas State University to study internet “radicalization”;

About $4 million to war contractor Lockheed Martin “to operate a National Criminal Justice Technology Information Resource Center (NCJ-TIRC) within the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) System”;

$330,000 to Boston’s Children’s Hospital for research on “Gang Affiliation and Radicalization to Violent Extremism within Somali-American Communities”; and

NOVANEWS

Studies show that people are gullible enough to believe anything if it appears on TV and sounds authoritative. If this is really true, upper-echelon pharmaceutical companies may be using the media to bend the public’s perception.

Giant corporations—and other entities that act as though they own the entire galaxy—have a tendency toward the chameleonic behavior of astroturfing because it works so well.

Astroturfing involves an individual or organization masquerading as a grassroots movement while hiding the true wizardly sponsor and its intentions behind the curtain. It can get even more complicated with story layers—carefully constructed narratives—that include made-up groups “false flagging” themselves and co-opting a movement mimicking or debunking myths (that weren’t even myths in the first place) in order to sway public opinion.

Astroturfing can involve a deceptive orpurposely controversialmethod of selling products all the way up tooverthrowing governments with color revolutions. All of those goals can involve the use of online comments, blogs, studies, and social media to give the appearance of an organic effort with widespread support or to create confusion that lulls the audience into belief.

Made up myths that are “debunked,” which can wind up on Snopes (I call them Inception stories)

Attacking the character of people or organizations instead of addressing the facts

Those that reserve all of their public skepticism and criticism for those exposing the wrong-doers instead of directing that skepticism to the wrongdoers themselves. A prime example Attkisson mentions is those “skeptics” who, instead of questioning authority, question those that question the authority.

After watching this, you will never again read Wikipedia, Snopes, the news, blogs, Facebook comments, or Google results without a major guard. With just ten minutes and the tips above, you, too will be better at researching and spotting hidden propaganda andbotsand not falling for the appearance of skeptics—which could actually be pharma-funded attackers on legitimate exposé.

Posted in HealthComments Off on 4 Ways to Spot Big Pharma’s Media Manipulation

NOVANEWS

Paris – On July 12, Greece surrendered abjectly and totally. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who had promised to combat the austerity measures that are driving the Greek people to ruin, poverty and suicide, betrayed all his promises, denied the will of the people expressed in the July 5 referendum, and led the Greek parliament to accept an agreement with the nation’s creditors even worse than all those that had already caused the economy to shrink and which further abandoned the last scraps of national sovereignty.

Yes, Greece surrendered unconditionally, as has been thoroughly and eloquently expressed here on CounterPunch and elsewhere. But one crucial question appears not to have been adequately answered. To whom, exactly, did Greece surrender?

A common answer to that question is: Germany. The poor Greeks surrendered to the arrogant Germans. This theme has served to revive anti-German feelings left over from World War II. Frau Merkel is portrayed as the heartless villain. One thing is sure: the animosity between Greece and Germany aroused by this debt catastrophe is proof that the “European dream” of transforming the historic nations of Western Europe into one single brotherly federation, on the model of the United States of America, is a total flop. The sense of belonging to a single nation, with all for one and one for all, simply does not exist between peoples whose languages, traditions and customs are as diverse as those between Finns and Greeks. Adopting a common currency, far from bringing them together, has driven them farther apart.

But was this disaster actually dictated by the wicked Germans?

In reality, very many Germans, from the right-wing Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble all the way to the former leader of the left party “Die Linke” Oskar Lafontaine would have preferred a very different solution: Greece’s exit from the Eurozone. Schaüble was thinking of German finances, while Lafontaine was thinking of what would be best for the people of Greece – and of Europe as a whole.

Between those two extremes, a German compromise could have averted the abject surrender of July 12, by organizing Greece’s return to its national currency, the drachma.

Indeed, by the time of the Greek referendum, a majority of European Union creditor governments would have preferred to see Greece leave the Eurozone.

The one government that crowed with victory over the Greek surrender was the French government of François Hollande. In last minute negotiations, France took the position that Greece absolutely must be kept in the Eurozone, in order to “save Europe”. French commentators are jubilant that Hollande “stood up to Merkel” and saved both the sacrosanct “Franco-German couple” and the European Union itself by insisting that Greece stick to the hard currency that is killing it.

So can we conclude that Greece surrendered to France?

Let’s not be ridiculous. The French debt rivals that of Greece, with the difference, of course, that France has a real economy. France owns the largest share of Greek debt after Germany. But nevertheless, France is also eventually threatened by the Eurozone rules that are imposing debt servitude on southern European member states. France is in no position to dictate economic policy to Germany.

And that observation brings us around to the factor that has been overlooked in the case of Greece: the relationship of forces within the “trans-Atlantic community” and its military branch, NATO.

The United States has been relatively discrete during this crisis, but Washington’s will is known. Greece must stay tightly within the European Union, for geopolitical reasons. Just look where Greece is, and what it is: an Orthodox Christian country with traditional good relations with Russia, located on the Mediterranean not so far from “Putin’s Russia”. Greece must not be allowed to drift away. Period.

Another question that has been totally overlooked: is it possible for a NATO member country to shift policy in a way contrary to U.S. interests? Is it free to move toward truly friendly relations with Russia? Greece has seen a military putsch in the not so distant past. The command and control of NATO member countries is closely monitored by the United States military.

Since former President Nicolas Sarkozy reversed General de Gaulle’s strategic move to ensure national independence and returned France to the NATO command, France has indeed aligned itself with Washington to an unprecedented extent. With his brief show of “standing up to Madame Merkel”, François Hollande was in fact carrying out the policy of Victoria Nuland.

The European Union (including Germany) will continue to wrestle with its “Greek problem”, while Greece will continue to be strangled by the European Union.

The European surrender to the United States occurred about seventy years ago. It was welcomed as a liberation, of course, but it has turned into lasting domination. It was simply reconfirmed by the July 12, 2015, Greek surrender. And that surrender has been enforced by an increasingly hegemonic ideology of anti-nationalism, particularly strong in the left, that considers “nationalism” to be the source of all evil, and the European Union the source of all good, since it destroys the sovereignty of nations. This ideology is so dominant on the left that very few leftists dare challenge it – and Syriza was leftist in exactly that way, believing in the virtue of “belonging to the European Union”, whatever the pain and suffering it entails. Thus Syriza did not even prepare for leaving the Eurozone, much less for leaving the European Union.

As a result, only “right-wing” parties dare defend national sovereignty. Or rather, anyone who defends national sovereignty will be labeled “right-wing”. It is too easily forgotten that without national sovereignty, there can be no democracy, no people’s choice. As the Greek disaster obliges more and more Europeans to have serious doubts about EU policy, the mounting desire to reassert national sovereignty faces the obstacle of left-right stereotypes. Much of the European left is finding itself increasingly caught in the contradiction between its anti-nationalist “European dream” and the destruction of democracy by the EU’s financial bureaucracy. The Greek drama is the opening act of a long and confused European conflict.

Posted in GreeceComments Off on Greece Surrendered: But to Whom Exactly?

NOVANEWS

Nuland and Pyatt, lords of the Verkhovna Rada

Yesterday the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, introduced to the parliament constitutional amendments on the special status of Donbass. …

The amendments were introduced during the visit to Ukraine by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, who along with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt was present of the floor of the Verkhovna Rada.

Nuland said that the constitutional amendments made by Kiev suggest that Ukraine has fulfilled its obligations under the Minsk Agreement.

According to her, at a meeting with President Petro Poroshenko, they discussed the importance of Ukraine’s compliance with its obligations under the Minsk Agreement. She paid particular attention to the need for legislative recognition of the special status of Donbass. In her opinion, this is necessary for the restoration of peace and territorial integrity in eastern Ukraine.

The special status of Donbass will be “the answer to any question about Ukraine’s compliance with the Minsk agreement,” she said.

Political analyst Victor Shapinov said that to accept constitutional changes you need a minimum of 300 votes of the deputies (out of 450), whereas the draft proposed by Poroshenko received only 288 votes, and will now be sent to the Constitutional Court for examination.

Victor Shapinov: So the case drags on. The law itself was enacted under unprecedented pressure from the United States. Victoria Nuland personally came to the Parliament to conduct the ballot – an unprecedented case even for puppet regimes like South Vietnam. The United States, and even more so the EU, has already “got” the situation where the Kiev regime is defiantly not fulfilling the Minsk agreement. On the other hand, the Kiev regime, under the dictation of the United States, “complied” in such a way that Donbass can under no circumstances accept it.

Once again there is an impasse – which probably suits the Washington strategists.

The Russian media response is surprising, with some beginning to say that Poroshenko’s proposal is exactly what the Donbass republics sought. In fact, the population of the republics initially demanded at least federalization of the country, and then voted in a referendum for complete independence from Ukraine and the creation of their own state.

Free Press: The adopted amendments really look like a mockery of Minsk, which is recognized in Donetsk and Lugansk, and in Moscow. What do you think?

VS: The same. Even Poroshenko said that his proposals do not provide for special status for Donbass and the “additional provisions for the peculiarities of local self-government in some areas of eastern Ukraine.” This is a direct mockery of the spirit and letter of the Minsk accords.

Kiev’s maneuver is obvious — to simulate the execution of Minsk, but in fact leave no chance for the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to agree to its proposals. It is an attempt to shift responsibility for the escalation of the war onto the republics and put Russia in an awkward position: either Moscow abandons the republics to Kiev under unacceptable conditions, or it becomes responsible for a new round of war.

However, the Kiev authorities have not taken into account that the tail can’t wag the dog. Or if so, not for long. Kiev’s European senior partners have repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the collapse of Minsk-2. Now Washington is unhappy with its satellite. And they don’t hesitate to show this openly. Before our eyes Kiev goes from being a convenient tool in the hands of the West to an inconvenient one. They shame Kiev. And from this it is only one step to withdrawal of support, which the Kiev regime clearly would not survive.

FP: They speak of completely unprecedented pressure on Kiev from the West to adopt this decision. Why now?

VS: Washington is now talking about the need for cooperation with Russia on the situation in Syria and the Middle East as a whole. Apparently, by “turning up the heat” on official Kiev, they are trying to show Moscow that an agreement is possible, that for the U.S. the Ukrainian conflict is not so fundamental, and they are willing to compromise. Another thing is that any compromise will be rotten.

FP: Is the adoption of the amendments connected with the intensification of fighting in Donbass?

VS: Quite the opposite. They were training and preparing the intensification of hostilities. Now the United States showed that they can rein in their satellite if necessary. They demonstrate their control over Kiev in tradeoff with Russia.

FP: Will the adopted amendments complicate the standoff with the authorities, provoking another coup by ultra-right radicals?

VS: So far, since Mukachevo, the so-called radicals have demonstrated very limited resources for mobilization. Without the support of the Ukrainian oligarchy and a “signal” from the West, they hardly dare to do anything serious. The United States continues to support Poroshenko, and the EU follows in their footsteps in this regard. The “radicals,” the Nazis, are only a tool of the oligarchy for suppressing street opposition and dissent. No one takes them seriously as contenders for power — at best, merely as junior partners.

Ukrainian journalist Andriy Manchuk stressed that yesterday’s events in Parliament showed that the foreign policy of Ukraine is dictated from outside — and, moreover, no one considers it necessary to conceal this fact from the public.

Andriy Manchuk: Nuland and Pyatt put direct pressure on the ruling coalition to force them to inscribe in the constitution a new version of the special status for the Donbass territory outside Kiev’s control. Of course, it looks like a humiliation for Ukraine’s national dignity, as with some of the Latin American “banana republics” of the last century — even though Latin American society usually responds much more forcefully to such cynical external dictates. And one can be sure that the nationalist rhetoric adopted by the regime is a cover for our country’s loss of sovereignty – even many of its ideological supporters are now becoming aware of that.

Internal policies of Ukraine are determined from the outside — across the full spectrum of major important political and economic issues. And it’s not the Kremlin’s doing.

FP: Adoption of the amendments comes amidst the government’s conflict with the radicals in the west. Is there a connection between these events?

AM: The conflict with the ultra-right, combined with the fact that Poroshenko was unable to hold a vote on the Donbas without the personal intervention of U.S. politicians and diplomats, really shows that the government does not control fully the situation in Ukraine. Another thing is that it fully coincides with the traditional political line of the U.S. State Department, which always seeks to act as an external arbiter between political forces weakened by internal conflicts in countries dependent on the U.S.

FP: Why did the U.S. suddenly decide to put pressure on Poroshenko?

AM: The reasons that the United States forced the Ukrainian parliament to take yesterday’s decision likely has a complex character — that is, it’s determined by different aspects of U.S.-Russian relations on a wide range of issues, from the Iranian and Syrian issue to behind-the-scenes dialogue on the Ukrainian problem. Both sides are maneuvering in the context of an acute conflict, and are very far from ending the war – as shown by the escalated fighting at the front.

First, despite the fact that most citizens of Ukraine are waiting for peace, the politicians of the ruling coalition, as well as officials and businessmen who profit from this war — not to mention their clientele from among far-right militants, “civil society activists” and pro-government media — are categorically not interested in ending the conflict. And they will do all they can to make it last as long as possible. Second, external political forces that define our country’s policies also see the special status as something very vague that could be disavowed at any time, no more than a political bargaining chip, where the conditional “carrot” balances the “stick” of the proposed tribunal for Boeing [the MH17 crash].

FP: Do you see any non-military solution to the conflict? The media often write about the prospects of a Transnistrian or Bosnian scenario…

AM: Donbass is not Bosnia or Transnistria, and the economic and political situation in Europe and around the world today not at all similar to the situation in the early ‘90s. Peace is possible in the Donbass — the only question is, how many months or years of war separate us from it, and will this conflict be a prelude to more global shocks? I do not think Washington, Brussels or Moscow know the exact answer to this question.

NOVANEWS

The US is prepared to put more pressure on Russia if the conflict in Ukraine escalates, and threatens that “the costs [then] will go up”, according to US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland; she also revealed that the US has spent $150 million on training the Ukrainian military, which it regards as “security assistance”.

“As you know, the sanctions that the international community has put in place – that the US and the EU have in place – are there to change the policy of Russia, to encourage it to fulfill its obligations. We’ve made clear that they will stay in place until Minsk is fully implemented, including an end to the violence, including a return of hostages, a return of the border. But we’ve also made clear that if the violence increases, we’re prepared to put more pressure on Russia,” Nuland said in an interview with the host of “Shuster Live” talk show on 112 Ukraine TV channel.

“Our hope is that we can use this pressure – the increased capability – to see Russia and those that they manage in Donetsk and Lugansk, implement the obligations that they’ve made. If not, the costs will go up,” she said, adding that it will be both economically and militarily.

The politician also revealed that the US has “contributed about $150 million dollars so far to security assistance – to training. We’re training out in Yavoriv.”

Currently over 300 paratroopers from the US army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade have been training the Ukrainian military at the Yavoriv range in the Lviv region since April 20. The declared purpose is “to develop professional skills of the National Guard servicemen.”

US Assistant Secretary of State recently commented on Ukraine’s fulfilment of Minsk agreement, claiming that Kiev’s amendments to its constitution addressing the special status of Donbass “show that Kiev has implemented its side of Minsk II, the second ceasefire agreement in the Donbass conflict”.

The claim was bashed by the chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Foreign Relations Committee as “far from the Minsk Agreements and only close to [President Poroshenko] own political fantasies.”

On July 16, Poroshenko submitted a proposal on constitutional amendments which would address the special status of the Donbass region to the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

The draft amendments to Ukraine’s Constitution imply no federalization or special status for the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics known as Donbas, President Poroshenko said on Thursday.

“There is not a single hint of federalization. Ukraine was, is and will remain a unitary state. The draft envisages no special status of Donbas. I am sure that the proposed draft is no way beyond the framework of the Minsk agreements,” Poroshenko said.

According to the draft amendments, “a special law will regulate peculiarities of local self-government” in the districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

However, the Verkhovna Rada is not set to vote for the constitutional amendments submitted by Poroshenko and this draft will be sent to the Constitutional Court, an MP from the Poroshenko Bloc faction said earlier on Thursday.

Constitutional amendments providing more autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were stipulated by the February Minsk agreements signed by Kiev and Donbass representatives, along with a ceasefire deal.

Posted in UkraineComments Off on US Prepares to Put More Pressure on Russia

NOVANEWS

Former engineer Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, according to investigators, was a lone gunman with no prior infractions who this week targeted two US military facilities in Tennessee, killing four militants and no civilians.

Salman bin Abdulaziz is one of the world’s worst dictators. He has manyprior infractions, such as publiclyannouncing becoming a rogue nuclear state, beheading and torturing hundreds of people and repressing millions, and is currently carrying out a war of aggression against one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen, killing thousands of civilians and enforcing a blockade that risks starving millions, as Yemen imports almost all of its food.

The despot Abdulaziz is one of Washington’s top allies. His terrorist regime is the recipient of the biggest shipment of weapons in US history, approved by Obama in 2010 (the US is the world’s biggest arms trafficker). These killing machines are now being used on the people of Yemen. In 2013, Obama sent the despot almost a billion dollars worth of banned cluster bombs, which both Obama and Abdulaziz have now used against Yemenis.

Many foreign nationals are trapped in the war-zone in Yemen, and eight countries, including India, China, and Russia, are performing risky missions to rescue civilians, their own citizens as well as others. While there are thousands of US civilians trapped in Yemen, Washington vocally refuses to rescue them, issuing a facile claim that it would be too risky, while at the same time performing rescue missions for Saudi pilots whose planes have gone down in Yemen.

Washington is also personally coordinating with dictator Abdulaziz on the strikes, and is refueling the US planes being flown by Saudi pilots.

Obama continues to bomb Yemen himself, killing hundreds of suspects and civilians in a death campaign he has been pursuing for years. He is also participating in enforcing the blockade, which human rights groups say has led the country to the brink of a mass humanitarian catastrophe.

The attack by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez is a small and diluted taste – no explosives were used and no suspects or civilians were killed – of what drone strikes on one’s country are like.

Whenever the US gets a small taste of its own medicine, it doesn’t like it, yet continues to administer the medicine to others in mega-doses. Washington elites know their violence causes violent retaliation, but continue it because they themselves are insulated and safe, and only lower-level grunts and civilians, their human shields, will take the hits.

The Tennessee shooter is quoted in his high school year book as saying that his name, Abdulazeez, “causes national security alerts”. This is now literally true, but is dependent on circumstances. One attack by an Abdulazeez is saturating US headlines and receiving stark condemnation from the US government/oligarchy (Obama called it “heartbreaking”), while an incomparably worse attack by an incomparably worse Abdulaziz, raining down on thousands of people, including US Americans abandoned by their oligarchy, is met with media silence and extreme support and participation from Washington.

NOVANEWS

More US aid and the release of Zionist spy Pollard – the price tag on the Iran nuclear deal?

THE ALGEMEINER – The U.S. Department of Justice is “seriously” considering the release of Zionist spy Jonathan Pollard later on this year, a source with knowledge of the matter revealed to The Algemeiner on Friday.

Zionist spy Pollard, who was jailed in 1987 after he admitted to passing classified information to NAZI regime, would be released on Nov. 21 when he is eligible for parole, according to the source, who did not wish to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The release would come at the 30 th anniversary of his arrest and amid a number of reports in recent years of his ill health and hospitalization. Pollard will be 61 years old on Aug. 7 and is being held at a federal prison in Butner, N.C.

The source stressed that the release is not connected in any way to the Iran nuclear deal announced this week on Tuesday, which has been a major source of tension between the U.S. and the NAZI regime.

There will be “no special exemptions,” the source said.

Last November, a group campaigning for the release of Zionist spy Pollard said a parole board denied a request to free him after American officials said the release would send the wrong message, The Times of I$raHell reported. At the time, the group said it would release information pointing to the White House’s attempts to prevent Zionist spy Pollard from going free, according to the report.

Zionist spy Pollard canceled a parole board hearing at the last minute in April 2014 amid reports that his release could be secured as part of a political deal at the time to salvage U.S.-brokered peace talks between the NAZI regime and the Palestinians, The Times of I$raHell said.

Zionist spy Pollard is believed to be the only American ever to receive a life sentence for passing classified information to an ally of the United States. NAZI officials, American and Israeli activist groups, and American politicians who see his punishment as unfair have lobbied continuously for a reduction or commutation of his sentence.

Posted in USA, ZIO-NAZIComments Off on Jonathan Pollard Likely to be Released Later This Year

NOVANEWS

The private film – apparently shot more than 80 years ago at Balmoral – has been “exploited”, says a Palace statement.

Buckingham Palace has said it is “disappointing” that a private film which seems to show the Queen doing a Nazi salute as a young child has been “exploited”.

Apparently shot in 1933 and obtained by the Sun, it shows the monarch aged six or seven with the Queen Mother, her uncle Prince Edward, and sister Princess Margaret.

The 17-second clip was shot in the garden at Balmoral six years before the start of World War Two, according to the paper.

The Queen Mother is first to make the salute and the young Queen copies her.

A Palace spokesman said: “It is disappointing that film, shot eight decades ago and apparently from Her Majesty’s personal family archive, has been obtained and exploited in this manner.”

Prince Edward – who faced accusations of being a Nazi sympathiser – also performs the gesture in the film.

The two children then carry on playing in the garden.

“Most people will see these pictures in their proper context and time,” said a Palace source.

“This is a family playing and momentarily referencing a gesture many would have seen from contemporary news reels.

“No one at that time had any sense how it would evolve. To imply anything else is misleading and dishonest.

“The Queen is around six years of age at the time and entirely innocent of attaching any meaning to these gestures.

“The Queen and her family’s service and dedication to the welfare of this nation during the war, and the 63 years the Queen has spent building relations between nations and peoples speaks for itself.”

The Sun’s – which ran the story under the headline “Their Royal Heilnesses” – acknowledged in its editorial column that the images “do not reflect badly on our Queen, her late sister or mother in any way”.

However, it said the film gives “a fascinating insight in the warped prejudices of Edward VIII and his friends in that bleak, paranoid, tumultuous decade”.

The paper’s managing editor Stig Abell told Sky News: “A piece of historically interesting and valid footage has come our way and it’s in the public and national interest in my view quite simply to publish it.”

He defended the paper’s choice of headline and said: “I think the nature of the coverage as a whole places this in the correct cultural context.”

The Queen’s former press secretary Dickie Arbiter told Sky News: “I would like to think it was released inadvertently as a bit of harmless 1933 footage without anybody really knowing what was on it.

“I think what they (Buckingham Palace) would probably like to know is where it came from and who gave it to The Sun.”

Sky News understands the Palace is likely to be looking into whether the process leading to the publication of the video could have involved criminal activity and could also breach copyright.

Edward became King in January 1936 but gave up the throne after just 11 months to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson.

The couple’s meeting with Hitler in Germany in October 1937 – still two years before the start of the war – stoked accusations that he was sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

Posted in UKComments Off on Palace Defends Queen Over Nazi Salute Film